How Have Great Writers Dealt with the Most Energizing Human Emotion Revenge

The most famous drama on revenge is Shakespeare's Hamlet. All of his tragedies share the common theme of revenge. Revenge is a startingly human characteristic. All great writers have used this most powerful human emotion as a motivating force, a god in itself. In the opening to Homer's Odyssey, the foundations of preparing for war gives stark instances of direful revenge practices.

It is one of the prime conditons for a tragedy, a dramatic tragedy as compared to a farce, that the dark brooding need for revenge is the chief motivating factor.

Revenge is a common unifying emotion found in all people. We all share the same frustrations and seek the same outlets. It isn't funny at all to see people regardless of race, ethnic background, cultural pretense, or wealth, react to the same needs when motivated by and for revenge.

Consider if you have been the duped partner in a marriage, what would be your instigating moment to seek revenge? Just the loss of face actually.

How easy it is to look into the lives of political people since their lives are everybody's business and think how would that person seek revenge.

Clarence Thomas when accused by a black woman of gross sexual misconduct pled that he was being lynched by another black person. His attacks on a black female were actually grosser than the gross sexual act that she accused him off and yet he won,

We are not all that duped by his defence. The implication was that he had acted as he was supposed to act towards a person of his own racial and cultural milieu.

Take the case of Bill Clinton using a cigar on Monica Lewinski's derriere and the millions spent by Kenneth Starr and the slander that we as Americans had to swallow while our President was using the same defense as Clarence Thomas.

Would those women involved in such blatant, real, horrifying misuse of power by prominent men be able to plan and to get revenge?

What drama would that hold for people. Quite a bit I would say.

For revenge to work in a dramatic sense one needs, in my opinion, these characteristics.

1. Public people who are well known for their work in their profession.

2. Marital or companion or equal stature.

3. A third party either willing or forced to make the triangle.

4. Hurtful attacks and behavior against one of the three involved in the triangle.

5. Calculated, plotting by the hurt party against the perceived attacker.

6. Successful act of forcing the attacker to his knees.

7. Getting away with the plot and licking one's wounds in private.

8. Public humiliation of the attacker and silent vindication of the hurt party.

Trust me we would all have the same release of pent up frustations in one of these dramatic scenarios motivated by the most primeval human trait, revenge.